Today we had UNDP day.
Early in the morning we had a debriefing with the DRR before the UNDESA/Italian mission arrived. The big idea here is to make UNDP the coordinator or facilitator of all e-governance activities by integrating the two areas within the office and use this externally to advice others such as DESA.
After the official session with the mission, we saw the RR who raised similar issues vis-a-vis UNDP’s role. The question on exact levels of funding for project implementation was also specifically raised by the RR on a semiprivate meeting with the head of the mission.
After the mission left the office, we met with the RR to discuss GDOI and a reply to the recent message from Markle re their contribution to the ICTD programme in the country.
We arrived at the Policy Commision around noon to discuss a couple of issues with Salomao and his team. The first was the new proposal for ICTD capacity building in the provinces which in principle is supposed to be funded by the Italians to the tune of 1.5 million US. UNDP has agreed to finance the formulation which will start next week with a mission to the provinces.
The second issue raised was increasing the capacity of the commission itself. As it is now, the commission has no staff to support its ever increasing activities, specially at the technical and middle management levels. The idea is to provide short term support while planning for a long term strategy. One idea was to “lend” them Serge for a few weeks, etc..
Tomorrow the UNDESA mission ends with a public presentation of their major findings. Loking forward for a couple of surprises…
Ra�l
